2. We Are Going to Lose the War in Afghanistan and It Will Help Bankrupt Us

3. We Need to End the Secret Shame of Our Empire of Bases

10 Steps Toward Liquidating the Empire

1. We need to put a halt to the serious environmental damage done by our bases planet-wide.

2. Liquidating the empire will end the
burden of carrying our empire of bases and so of the "opportunity
costs" that go with them.

3. As we already know (but often forget), imperialism breeds the use of torture.

4. We need to cut the ever-lengthening
train of camp followers, dependents, civilian employees of the
Department of Defense, and hucksters — along with their expensive
medical facilities, housing requirements, swimming pools, clubs, golf
courses, and so forth — that follow our military enclaves around the
world.

5. We need to discredit the myth
promoted by the military-industrial complex that our military
establishment is valuable to us in terms of jobs, scientific research,
and defense.

6. As a self-respecting democratic
nation, we need to stop being the world's largest exporter of arms and
munitions and quit educating Third World militaries in the techniques
of torture, military coups, and service as proxies for our imperialism.

7. We should abolish the Reserve
Officers' Training Corps and other long-standing programs that promote
militarism in our schools.

8. We need to restore discipline and accountability in our armed forces.

9. We need to reduce the size of our standing army.

10. We must give up our inappropriate
reliance on military force as the chief means of attempting to achieve
foreign policy objectives.